Pike, three inches long, perfect
Pike in all parts, green tigering the gold
Killers from the egg: the malevolent aged grin
They dance on the surface among the flies

Or move, stunned by their own grandeur
Over a bed of emerald, silhouette
Of submarine delicacy and horror
A hundred feet long in their world

In ponds, under the heat-struck lily pads -
Gloom of their stillness:
Logged on last year's black leaves, watching upwards
Or hung in an amber cavern of weeds

The jaws' hooked clamp and fangs
Not to be changed at this date;
A life subdued to its instrument;
The gills kneading quietly, and the pectorals

Three we kept behind glass
Jungled in weed: three inches, four
And four and a half: fed fry to them -
Suddenly there were two. Finally one

With a sag belly and the grin it was born with
And indeed they spare nobody
Two, six pounds each, over two foot long
High and dry in the willow-herb -
One jammed past its gills down the other's gullet:
The outside eye stared: as a vice locks -
The same iron in his eye
Though its film shrank in death

A pond I fished, fifty yards across
Whose lilies and muscular tench
Had outlasted every visible stone
Of the monastery that planted them -

Stilled legendary depth:
It was as deep as England. It held
Pike too immense to stir, so immense and old
That past nightfall I dared not cast

But silently cast and fished
With the hair frozen on my head
For what might move, for what eye might move
The still splashes on the dark pond

Owls hushing the floating woods
Frail on my ear against the dream
Darkness beneath night's darkness had freed
That rose slowly towards me, watching